


The Red That is Ran Mitake

by krizzlybear



Category: BanG Dream! (Anime), BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: Bandori Rarepair Week, F/F, Is That a Chihayafuru Reference, My Dinner With Andre But With Lesbians, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23012530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krizzlybear/pseuds/krizzlybear
Summary: Sayo Hikawa has dinner with Ran Mitake, and it changes her life forever.
Relationships: Hikawa Sayo/Mitake Ran
Comments: 12
Kudos: 25





	The Red That is Ran Mitake

**Author's Note:**

> You should be listening to gymnopedie No. 1 while reading this.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj_UETbqHuI - This one is the longest version I could find. Hopefully that should be enough to cover the length of this fic. Enjoy!

It was late in the afternoon, and I would have liked nothing better than to stop by Hazawa coffee and have my friend, Tsugumi, make me a nice cup of brew. For the longest time, I had enjoyed her company and her stories about herself and her band, Afterglow. We’d even text back and forth about different things surrounding our respective lives at school and with our own musical pursuits.

But the weirdest thing of all was that I’d been trapped by an odd series of circumstances into agreeing to have dinner with Hazawa-san’s friend and vocalist for Afterglow, Ran Mitake. In time, our bands had become very close rivals. In fact, she was the girl who set the entire rivalry in motion, proposing a joint concert with Roselia.

When I’d known Mitake-san, she’d been at the height of her career as a band vocalist. The amazing work she did with Afterglow, writing a song for Pastel*Palettes, she made a name for herself and her band throughout the city.

But something had happened to Mitake-san. She started to seriously pursue a newfound interest in flower arrangement, a family art, of which her father was a master instructor. For some time, her bandmates would mention things like her having to skip band or be pulled out of school to do things like go to culture shows and art festivals. It was all for the sake of both her family and for the band, so she could continue playing with them.

She never used to like to do anything else but hang out on the roof of her school and watch the sun set, or something like that.

Obviously, something along the way had happened to Mitake-san. The whole idea of meeting her made me very uneasy. It was only natural that someone like myself who only had secondhand knowledge and contact with her would be nervous. I had my own things to worry about, and whatever she wanted to talk to me about could just wait for later. It was clear that she should talk to Hazawa-san instead, but somehow that wasn’t possible.

I arrived at a quaint restaurant that was quietly tucked away in an alley a few train stations away from Haneoka. It had a very faint glow from the numerous paper lanterns strewn about the interior, and while one would normally assume that it was mostly decorative for aesthetic mood purposes rather than any other cultural importance, the accompanying floral arrangements set on side tables throughout the restaurant gave off a traditional feel that I could not identify without prior research.

In the background, Gymnopedie No. 1 played from a corner speaker, with eloquent piano tones that perfectly matched the lighting and artistry.

I was greeted immediately by a soft “welcome!” by an older man at the door. Politely, I mentioned I was waiting for Ran Mitake, to which the man replied, “She’ll be arriving soon. You are free to have a drink if you’d like, she said it would be her father’s treat.”

Far be it from me to turn down a distant colleague’s hospitality, I ordered an iced coffee as I sat down at the bar.

“We only serve sake here, I’m sorry.”

“That’s fine. I’ll have water instead.”

When I texted Mitake-san earlier, and she suggested that we meet in this particular restaurant, I was taken aback, because I figured her to have the same typical tastes as a normal high schooler, eating Ramen after class or grabbing a croquette from the Kitazawa meat shop at the shopping district.

It was when Hazawa-san had called me and insisted that I had to meet her. Apparently, she had been closing up her parents’ cafe, and she suddenly came upon Mitake-san, leaning against the florist shop and crying.

Mitake-san had explained to Hazawa-san that she had just been watching a Poppin’ Party concert at Galaxy studio, just a few blocks away, and she’d been seized by a fit of unconsolable tears when the guitarist and vocalist, Kasumi Toyama sang the line, “Thank you...The song that makes my heart tremble, Returns”.

“Sayo-san, good evening.”

“Mitake-san? Oh, hello.”

I almost didn’t recognize her at first, from the way she had worn her impeccably designed hakama. Even more so was the way she had greeted me with an elegant and feminine bow, with her fingers so neatly clasped at the front, and not a single bend in her neck or back.

“My goodness, you look gorgeous, Mitake-san.” I didn’t mean to say that out loud, but the dark red fabric and falling golden leaves just overpowered my best efforts to match her manners.

“It’s a bit embarrassing,” She blushed, “but thank you.”

Even the way she brushed the fabric behind her legs so she could sit by the bar was utterly entrancing, and I chided myself for losing focus so easily.

“It’s based off of one of the 100 poems,” Mitake-san added:

_Impassionate gods have not seen_   
_the red that is the tatsuya river_

She brushed her sleeve so cooly as the bartender poured a small serving of wine for the both of us.

“Aren’t we too young for this?” I asked, almost instinctively. The evening mood would have swept me in to partake in its flavour had I not otherwise been a disciplinary chair of the student council.

“Master Mitake insists we serve this whenever the young lady visits,” the bartender replied. “For someone as revered as the master, we cannot refuse.”

It suddenly hit me, how everything had tied together. It seems that Mitake-san had climbed a considerable height of social status by virtue of being her father’s daughter and agreeing to continue his floral arrangement school. I didn’t expect all of that to come to this, though. The restaurant, the hakama. Everything.

I adjusted my uniform as best as I could, straightened my back, and gave a cursory sip. To my surprise, there was a sweet berry taste brought out by its warmth that spread throughout my tongue, and I didn’t notice the alcohol at all. Mitake-san calmly followed-suit, wafting the bouquet with a wave of her fingers beforehand; it was like she was casting a spell on both her drink and myself. I could have sworn that I briefly felt a wave of dizziness, yet I couldn’t tell if it was because of the alcohol or something else.

I was beginning to realize that the only way I could make myself forget about Mitake-san’s appearance was to ask her a few questions. Asking questions relaxes me, I think. If I can somehow learn as much information as possible about things that I don’t know about, it makes dealing with those things much more manageable. Unlike Hina, who finds utter joy in situations that are unfamiliar to her, I personally need to know what is going on in order to fully appreciate and enjoy it. So in this case, I asked about her beautiful hakama.

“This? It’s a bit embarrassing to say, but I just came from an event that my father arranged for me to do.”

“What were you doing?”

“I’d rather not say, but since you had to ask, I was reading for a competition. Have you heard about competitive karuta?”

Bingo. It all made sense again.

“Yes. I can say that I’m quite familiar. I helped Shirokane-san organize a competitive karuta tournament at Hanajo, and it was successful, thanks to the help of Maruyama-san and Matsubara-san.”

“So you know what I mean by reading then? That’s good to know. You see, my father, he always comes to our concerts, and he’s always looking out for me and tries to get me to do new things. At first, I was against him telling me to leave my band to pursue floral arrangement, but once he let me do both, I was able to learn a lot of new things.

“One day, he asked me, ‘Ran, when you sing, how do you practice?’ I couldn’t really explain it to him. It’s hard to talk about music to someone who isn’t familiar with it, but I tried to talk about it in terms of flower arrangement and traditional Japanese arts, and he said that he saw a match on tv the other day, and the person he was most interested in was the person reading the poems. There was something about the tone of the reader’s voice that resonated with my father, so without even asking me, he arranged for me to read for a karuta match.

“I was angry at him at first, because he went behind my back about it, but it turned out that he made sure I didn’t have anything planned for that day, and made arrangements to not only drive me to the location, but to also try on a hakama at a store close to the venue. It’s not the same as the kind of kimono that you would wear for festivals, but I don’t know. The one he made me try on, this one. It was so comfortable, and I looked at myself in the mirror and I couldn’t stop staring at myself.

“It was like I was a completely different person, you know? I just stared, and I could not recognize myself. And for a moment, I felt a little sad, because I was changing again. Have I ever told you about the time that we went through a hard time with Afterglow? I was trying to write a new song for the band, but nobody could understand my lyrics because I was off in a completely different world that I tried so desperately hard to get others to understand. But it turned out that I was just being selfish, and I was only writing for myself and not for others. I regret that mistake, but I’m glad that I was able to face my fears about the future and that I was able to realize that I needed to change in order for everything to stay the same with Afterglow.

“I guess you could say that the karuta event was one of those changes, because the girl in the mirror was so elegant, so beautiful, that I couldn’t help but wonder where she would go. It was then that one of the event organizers had given me a box with the hanafuda in it. My father told me afterwards that the card set was handed down from an eternal master from over fifty years ago. I don’t know what he meant by that, but I could tell that there was so much importance placed on these cards, and yet I was the one who was supposed to read them.

“Before the match started, the organizer who gave me the box of cards told me not to worry too much about phrasing, since it was just an exhibition match, but by then I was so intrigued by the world of karuta that I couldn’t help but stand by and watch one of the earlier rounds. And wouldn’t you believe it, there were high school students my age, dressed in different uniforms and some were also wearing hakama. I didn’t realize that there was this world where there were people like me who were so passionate about something that they wanted to leave their mark in history by being the best at a game that I barely even knew about.

“Towards the middle of the third round, something incredible and so sad happened. One girl who looked like Chiyu-san’s age, had been able to get all of the cards in the game, and her opponent, another girl who was probably as tall as Seta-senpai, was unable to do anything. She couldn’t take any cards. She tried so hard, and the more she struggled, the more I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She looked like the world she knew was about to fall apart. And when the next card was read, there were no longer any left on the younger girl’s side of the mat.

“She had a perfect game, the organizer told me. 25-0. I watched as the two of them bowed to each other, and the taller girl broke into tears and started sobbing uncontrollably. The other girl was unphased, as if it was the same as always, like she was a karuta prodigy or something. Since their game finished first, the reader had to continue reading the cards for the rest of the matches that were going on, and the tall girl eventually stopped crying, but you could hear her sniffles reverberate throughout the room in between the sounds of hands slapping the tatami.

“They were so passionate, Sayo-san. I thought I was going to cry myself, but the most amazing thing wasn’t the students playing. It was the reader at the front of the room. The way he picked up each of the cards and paused, and recited every poem with the same colour of voice, it felt magical. It was like being on the roof, watching the sunset and feeling the warmth embrace me for just a tiny moment before the cold evening set in. He made the sun set with every card he drew from the box, and I realized that what he was doing, I wanted to do with my music, with my lyrics.

“I think I cried. Or maybe it was just tears. I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m telling you this or why I just suddenly went on this long-winded story about a karuta tournament, but I feel like I just needed to get this off my chest. But nobody else from Afterglow was around. Everyone had their part time jobs, and Tomoe was with her taiko group. I needed to be with someone. So I called Tsugumi, and she told me to call you up.

“So thank you, Sayo-san. I really needed to have this tonight. Thank you so much.”

I got the feeling that Mitake-san was about to cry. My first response was to reach into my pockets looking for a handkerchief, but in my rashness, I had forgotten to bring one with me, even though I was well aware I was going to have dinner with an acquaintance from Afterglow. I didn’t want her to cry, but more importantly, I didn’t want her to mess up her hakama, the deep crimson garment that made her feel like a fire bird soaring through the sky, reborn.

In my best attempt to think on the spot, I did the most logical thing I could think of, which was to redirect her attention with my own personal story about karuta.

“Ran-san, I think that’s wonderful.” I didn’t mean to say her first name like that, but it just came out. “Oh, is it okay for me to call you that?”

Ran-san cracked a shy grin through reddened cheeks. “Yes. That’s fine. You can just call me Ran, if you want.”

“Very well. As I mentioned before, I too, have experience with the 100 poets. Just like you, I had no idea that there existed a karuta game where you had to listen to all of the poems read out loud. One of the teachers from the classical literature department asked us in student council if we could organize a tournament so that they could get more people interested in studying the poets.

“Grades were lower than expected in that class, and the entire department had difficulties figuring out how to improve the overall average. They asked Shirokane-san if she was up to the task of organizing a tournament from scratch. I knew in my mind that this was a potentially bad idea, because Shirokane-san was not the kind of person who would be able to take on this kind of project alone, especially during a critical time with Roselia.

“I’m fairly certain Minato-san had mentioned this to you, but us members of Roselia have been working together to make our goal come true, to be able to perform on stage at Future World Fest. I didn’t want our pianist to be responsible for this by herself, so I stepped in. There were a lot of things that needed to be done to prepare, like figuring out how to generate interest from the student body, and to attract more people to participate in the school tournament.

“It was obvious that I had my work cut out for me, so I was lucky to have run into Maruyama-san at the library at school. She, too, was struggling with memorizing the 100 poets, and she had told me that not only was memorizing difficult, but the approach to studying everything all at once was too intimidating. So I asked her if she would like help me organize the tournament. She was thrilled at the proposition. She was even able to get Matsubara-san to help.

“I went through a checklist with everyone concerning needs that had to be addressed for the tournament to become a success, and Maruyama-san volunteered to make a guide book with Matsubara-san while I handled the other matters like organizing the tournament and the venue. I was sure I could handle the preparations on my end, but to my surprise, everyone seemed to rally around Maruyama-san’s eagerness to succeed, and she made the mood brighter for everyone, myself included.

“You see, I was only thinking about whether or not the tournament was going to be a success, but Maruyama-san was thinking about everyone around her, about the organizers involved including myself, as well as the students who potentially were going to participate. Even those who didn’t attend the tournament were able to use the guidebook that Maruyama-san and Matsubara-san made, and had a much easier time studying for the upcoming test in classical literature.

“Even I didn’t think about the possibility that I could be having fun getting ready to play karuta. I think it was during the day before the tournament that Marumaya-san and Kitazawa-san asked me to read the cards for them in a practice match. It was just the three of us in the empty classics room. We were able to lay down the mats ahead of time for the tournament, and had the room to ourselves.

“So like you, I ended up reading. At first, all I could think about was the event itself, and I observed my surroundings to see if there were any adjustments that could be made to accomodate a better event. For example, I was thinking about the seating placement of the participants, and how many games could go on at once. I even read a little bit louder, as if there were other students in the back of the room who needed to hear me.

“But as I started reading more and more cards, I started feeling myself get caught up in the game that Maruyama-san and Kitazawa-san were playing. Earlier in the week, Kitazawa-san had won a practice match between the two of them, and it was because she was a natural athlete. Between two participants who were equally unfamiliar with the 100 poets, it was only natural for the more athletic girl to react to the reading and take cards faster as a result. But that wasn’t the case this time, since organizing the guidebook had made Maruyama-san better versed in the poems, and was even able to get cards just because she was more connected to the poems themselves.

“I suppose you could say that she cared more about the poems that day, and for whichever reason, it had spurred Kitazawa-san to try even harder. She was always the competitive type, it seems, but for someone who I had heard was very self-conscious about winning and losing, Kitazawa-san was more spirited because she was motivated to enjoy herself the way Maruyama-san was. Admittedly, I felt the exact same way.

“Like you, who had come to a realization that there was something magical about the way the game unfolds and how it inspires people to push themselves and try their best, I felt all of those feelings from not only Maruyama-san, but I think I felt a bit of a connection to the poems that day as well. Oh, and the tournament was a success, obviously, since Maruyama-san had gotten everyone in high spirits.”

I finished the rest of my sake. It had gotten cold, but it was as sweet as ever. At some point, the bartender had laid out a pair of kaiseki dishes for Ran and myself. I hadn’t even noticed.

“It felt like my heart was moved that day, for a lack of a better term.”

Ran-san smiled at that, and I’m not sure at which point she stopped tearing up, but there was something about the way we were both talking about Karuta and how the dim lighting coloured the dark crimson streak on her forelocks like autumn leaves.

“Hey, Sayo.” Ran said, snapping me out of my momentary gaze. “Which poem is your favourite? There was probably a poem that stuck out to you while you were preparing for the festival, right?”

I shook my head, not in response to her question, but to jog my memory, but all I could imagine was the autumn leaves and the Tatsuta that streaked from her hair all the way down to the rest of her hakama.

Impassionate? It was such a strange word. Back then I had spent the better part of an hour pouring through translations and interpretations, but no matter what I was reading, it never really clicked, since it was a poem about autumn scenery.

I reached out to Ran and slid my hand up and down her hakama to feel the soft touch of fabric run against my fingertips. She blushed. “Sayo-san! What are you doing?”

“Oh...Oh. I was just thinking about your hakama.” I lied. “It reminded me of Impassionate gods.”

Ran turned her head away and wrapped her arms around herself, closing her eyes as she took in the fabric. “Yeah. It’s not bad.”

<>

The guidebook says that Impassionate gods is a poem about the beauty of the Tatsuta River during the fall, when the leaves turn red. Other more scholarly interpretations I’ve read inform of the poem’s author, Ariwara no Narihira who tried to run away and elope with Empress Nijo no Kisaki, and how the poem is about a forbidden love that could only be expressed with stoic passion.

But for me, I see the word Impassionate as a spinning top, standing perfectly upright. It repels everything that touches it while remaining unchangingly firm, calm, and stable. I see Ran Mitake, a girl who pours her heart and soul into changing as much as she can so she can stay with her friends and sing in her band like she always has. A girl who conquers every obstacle that she faces and stays true to the ones she loves most.

Some say that the red in the Tatsuta River is a love that remains strong even in the autumn months, held closely by Ariwara for his empress long after she had married into royalty. For me, it is a love that only appeared in the autumn years of my comfortable and happy school life, tucked away in awe of a spinning goddess with a single streak of hair as red as the deep sunset.

I’ll never forget that poem, and I’ll never forget the red that is Ran Mitake.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be part of a series of oneshots, but the pairing is so rare that I'd rather feature it on its own. One day, I'll put together a ficlet collection to throw everything into. But for now, I hope you enjoyed this rarest of rare food.
> 
> tw: @curekrizzly


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